Protests Continue to Hurt Sales of Japanese Cars in China

By WSJ Staff

Chinese protesters damaged Japanese vehicles during protests in September.

SHANGHAI—Japanese car makers suffered a second consecutive month of sharply lower sales in China in a sign of the deepening impact of a territorial dispute between the two major trading partners.

Overall passenger-car sales in China rose 6.4% in October to 1.3 million vehicles from a year earlier, the semiofficial China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Friday.

But the group said sales of Japanese cars tumbled 38% to 98,900 vehicles, the first time sales of Japanese brands have fallen below 100,000 units since 2009. Their share of the market declined to 7.6% from 13% in September. Toyota Motor Corp., and others recently reported October sales drops in sales of their cars in China.

Their sales fell sharply in September as a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea flared up, spurring protests and a consumer boycott of Japanese products. Some consumers also have been frightened off by online images of demonstrators assaulting Japanese cars.

Toyota’s unit sales in China tumbled 44% in October, and Nissan’s sales fell 41%, all compared with a year-earlier figures.

European and U.S. auto makers gained market share as did domestic car-makers to a lesser extent. Market share of German-branded sedans rose to 27% in October from 24% in September, while that of Chinese homegrown brands grew to 31% from 30%.

The drop among Japanese brands hurts some Chinese local economies in addition to the Japanese companies because many of their sales here are cars are made domestically by joint ventures with Chinese partners employing local workers.